Saturday, May 9, 2009

Environmental matters in India seldom get priority. This is more so in the states where they are mostly kept on the back-burner. The central Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, for example, once thickly forested and wetter than many Indian states, has had a series of environmental mishaps because of its governments’ lackadaisical ways.

The world is aware of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, known as the world’s biggest “Industrial Disaster”, when a lethal gas leaked out from the now-defunct Union Carbide factory on a cold December night in 1984 killing hundreds and maiming thousands. The local environment was so fouled up that the affected people are still suffering from the after-effects of the poison they were exposed to. The post-mortem of the disaster had revealed that the tragedy was eminently avoidable had the authorities been a little more proactive. “Whistle blowers” had blown their whistle repeatedly, and every time more and more loudly; and yet the government was not shaken out of its lassitude.

That was 25 years ago but things, apparently, haven’t changed in the meantime. Something similar happened in the case of disappearance of tigers from Panna Tiger Reserve. A long-time researcher of Panna tigers, Raghu Chundawat, had blown the whistle way back in 2005 about missing tigresses of Panna. His repeated public and, presumably, private pleas fell on deaf ears. The Wildlife wing of the MP Forest Department (MPFD) continually remained in denial mode, i.e. until October 2008 when the newly-created National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) advised the state to relocate a tigress from Bandhavgarh. Though two tigresses were relocated into the Reserve in quick succession from neighbouring parks, yet the revival of the big cat in the Reserve is uncertain as the lone tiger that was to be provided female company has now become untraceable – a sad denouement for a state that is known by its sobriquet “the Tiger State”. Needless to say, tiger is the flagship species of India’s wildlife conservational effort. Besides, on its survival depends survival of India’s forests and concomitant ecological, food and water security.

The NTCA has, lately, appointed a Special Investigation Team to investigate the reasons for disappearance of tigers from Panna. Not to be outdone, the Forest Department, too, wants an enquiry of its own. This, undoubtedly, is the right approach. Not only the professional wildlife administrators and the government should know the reasons for a disaster of such a magnitude, even the people have a right to know how and why efforts made over last few decades to conserve tigers at their expense have, in substance, come to nought.

What, however, appears intriguing is that there appears to have been no effort so far to investigate another disaster – the one that relates to drying up of the 1000-year old Upper Lake in Bhopal. This, too, is a major environmental disaster which could prove to be catastrophic for the city in the future. The Lake today is not even a pale shadow of what it was last summer. Its vast spread of water, once virtually like an ocean, has now been reduced to the size of a small pond. Having lost 90% of its water, huge expanses of its bed now lie exposed – bone-dry and looking increasingly sinister by the day. Once the lifeline for 40% of the city’s population, it has now ceased to be so, being unable to contribute to the city’s water supplies. This did not happen even in 2002 when it suffered a double whammy. Not only was the rainfall inadequate, huge leaks had developed in a dam designed to hold the water.

Although the authorities preferred to turn a blind eye, many had foreseen the oncoming calamity. Individually and collectively people of the town have been raising the issue of utter neglect of the Upper and Lower lakes, the two lakes which, together, make up the Bhoj Wetland, a Ramsar Site. Bhopal Citizens’ Forum, a socially-conscious group of citizens, had filed a petition in 2007 with the State Human Rights Commission on the neglect and lack of effort to conserve the Wetland. The Commission got all the connected departments/agencies to respond to the petition. While the petition is still pending, the government departments/agencies, seemingly, did precious little during the interregnum.

Before that, around the turn of the Century, a World Bank-funded study conducted for economic valuation of the Wetland by an Environmental Economist of the prestigious Indian Institute of Forest Management had predicted that unless enough care was taken of it, it could die in another thirty years. It, perhaps, did not take into account the indifference of the state government to such mundane matters. Although submitted to it, the government gave the report its coldest of shoulders, thereby whipping the Wetland to gallop towards its end faster than predicted.

Inadequate rains are being touted as the reason for the calamity. The local Met office had put out that Bhopal and its catchments had received only 70% of the average rainfall during the last monsoon. No one is buying the official line. Reports have since appeared of the Lake’s feeder channels being encroached upon and dammed. There are evidences which are now coming to the fore of official apathy and ‘non-management’. Currently the management – if at all it can be called that – of the Wetland is so diffused that it is difficult to pin-point responsibility. No one knows who is in charge. Although the local municipality has been designated as its custodian, it has not been administratively and financially empowered. Besides, its writ does not run in the areas that are in the Wetland’s catchments as they fall outside the municipal limits.

A feeling of fear pervades the city that the Wetland may ultimately disappear. If that were to happen, its implications will be enormous. The Lower Lake that it feeds, too, will disappear. Already, it has shrunk appreciably. Also, the underground aquifers will dry up causing much of the green cover of the town to wither away. While the micro-climate of the town will be adversely affected, the disappearance of the Lake will seriously impair water-availability for an ever-rising population. More importantly, it will broadcast to the whole wide world the inability of the state and central governments, despite running two back-to-back Japanese Bank of International Cooperation-funded multi-million dollar projects, to conserve a water body that they got recognised as a site under the Ramsar Convention.

As in the cases of other environmental disasters an enquiry is necessary to ascertain reasons for the current pathetic state of the Wetland. Only such an enquiry can establish whether it was caused by natural, human or systemic failure. Such an investigation by a body of experts may also identify the systemic shortcomings in management of the Wetland and suggest effective mechanisms, with clear demarcation of institutional and individual responsibilities, to prevent such mishaps of this scale in the future. Above all, such an enquiry will predicate the state’s resolve – so far unseen – to purposefully deal with matters relating to environment.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

I had never imagined that I would ever come anywhere near the field of journalism. Having spent 30-odd years in the government I agreed with the assertions of many of my colleagues that I had, like them, become practically “useless” for all purposes. Destiny, however, seemed to have willed something else for me.

I established base at Bhopal (India) to spend the (post-retirement) home-stretch. With no pre-occupation and a mind still mercifully agile I progressively became conscious of my surroundings. The lack or, in many ways, total absence of civic amenities in this what-could-be-a-beautiful town irked me. With time available in profusion, I resurrected my Silver Reed portable typewriter and hammered away to churn out letters to the editors of local dailies. Some did seem to have impact, a majority did not. From civic issues I slowly graduated to topical, national and environmental issues and despatched my thoughts to national dailies. That venerable newspaper, The Statesman, highly regarded for its quality of content and language edited by the legendary CR Irani, would publish them, often, lo and behold, the title of my letter figuring as the headline for the “Letters” section. My life seemed to have been made!

Consumed by the obsession to express my views more effectively I took lessons in computing – along with kids old enough to be my grand-children. The computer, with its awesome capabilities, made things far easier. Egged on by my elder brother, I tried my hand at writing articles. Some of them, when finished, appeared good. Soon enough the City Supplement of the local edition of Hindustan Times started carrying my pieces, mostly on civic issues. Even Manuj Features, the erstwhile features agency spawned by the Makhalal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism, accepted my output and disseminated them to its subscribers. I had emerged as a casual columnist.

It was nothing intellectual that I wrote. I only gave expression to my reactions, positive or negative, to issues– local, topical, national or environmental – as an ordinary individual that I thought needed expression, generally, with relevant information culled from various sources. It was neither sycophantic, nor was it in any way “muckraking”. I wrote like a civic-minded non-professional within the given constraints of limited space seeking, as Sarah McClendon (1910-2003), the well-regarded American journalist, once said while claiming to be a citizen journalist, “To give more information to the people …for their own good”. Unknowingly, more than half a dozen years ago I, too, had become, somewhat of a “citizen journalist”, a term which, back then, was still far away from common parlance in this country.

Conceptually speaking, citizen journalism involves, as Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, so-called progenitors of “the golden age of journalism” said, in citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information…The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires". Citizen journalism has, therefore, been variously described as “public” or “participatory” journalism or even “democratic journalism”.

Although the idea that the average citizen could engage in journalistic effort has a pretty long history yet the professionals, with their training and corporate resources, seldom yielded any space to amateurs. Avid readers of newspapers would have noticed the progressively shrinking space for even readers’ views. And, of course, a non-professional can hardly ever break through the barrier of professionals who form into a coterie, monopolising news analyses in the corporate media.

However, with the progressive erosion of trust in the mainstream news-media, public journalism gathered strength. Technology gave fillip to it as an ordinary citizen could capture news and news-worthy incidents with photographs or video footage and distribute them globally. The journalism that was “by the people” began to flourish with the emerging internet and networking technologies. The audience of the conventional media, which so far had been harangued and sometime misled by partisan considerations, took it upon itself to report and project more objective news and views. In South Korea, OhmyNews founded by Oh Yeon-ho in 2000 with the motto "Every Citizen is a Reporter” became popular and even commercially successful. In this context mention must also be made of the Independent Media Centre (a.k.a Indymedia or IMC) that came into existence in 1999 during the anti-WTO protests at Seattle as a participatory network of journalists that reports on socio-political issues. Featuring as a milestone in the history of citizen journalism, Indymedia has pursued open publishing and democratic media process allowing all and sundry to contribute.

Not yet bound by any law, as perhaps professional journalists are in certain countries, the citizen journalists, ideally speaking, have to abide by some basic principles that demand a great degree of rectitude from them. To be purposeful and effective citizen journalism has got to be so. Hence, accuracy of facts, thoroughness, fairness of content and comment, transparency – the principle being “disclose, disclose, disclose” – and independence and non-partisan proclivities are attributes that generally are desirable and mostly insisted upon.

Technology having given a kind of head-start, citizen journalism has come a long way. Growing appreciation of its importance has fostered a mushroom growth of websites world over inviting and hosting content in the shapes of news, comments, blogs, photos or videos from the audience. Even the traditional media organisations – big or small, print or electronic – having gone online, have staff blogs and also invite audience participation in actual journalism. While a new phenomenon of “Mojo” – mobile journos – is on the horizon, using fast and versatile 3G networks, a prospective citizen journo would find umpteen hosts of his choice on a web-search.Although a recent phenomenon, citizen journalism websites have become popular in India. Here, too, as elsewhere, citizen journalism was the result of “digital era’s democratisation of the media – wide access to powerful, inexpensive tools of media creation and wide access to what people created, via digital networks.” While whitedrums.com was launched in 2005, many popular sites like merinews.com, Mynews.in, Purdafash.com, Rediff.com etc. that came up around the same time seem to be flourishing. Their role-model being OhmyNews.com, they generally report on more serious issues like climate change, health topics, science, politics, environmental or social problems.

Regardless of what the sceptics think citizens’ reportage has gathered nothing but strength. World over – in the US, Europe, South Africa, Australia and South Asia – new start-ups are appearing by the day. Yet credibility of the reportage is what the progress of citizen journalism hinges on. At a conference in Seoul in 2007, hosted by OhmyNews, the hugely successful citizen journalism medium, certain preconditions were set forth for user-created content centring on credibility, trustworthiness, influence and sustainability. Like in traditional media run by trained professionals, that, perhaps, cannot always be ensured.

Besides, the question that is raised often is whether an ordinary citizen can be a reporter. Rory O’Connor of Guardian says why not. “After all, I've been a professional journalist for decades - yet I never took a course in it, received a license for it or got anointed on high. So here's my advice - if you don't like the news, report some of your own.”

I have, for the last few months, been doing just that – reporting to OhmyNews, GroundReport, HumanTimes, merinews, Mynews. The response has been encouraging and experience rewarding.